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Obama's media blitz on high gas prices

A recent poll suggests a significant number of people think Obama can affect gas prices. | AP Photo

"It was a very high-arching discussion" that also got into the specifics of the various industries, McAdams told POLITICO. "I mean, the room was very supportive of a lot of the policies the president and the administration has put in place."

The meeting included talk of "how do we keep the ball moving forward" for the renewable fuels industry, jobs and energy security, McAdams said. That includes trying to provide long-term extensions of renewable energy tax incentives that have expired or are soon to expire.

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"You need to send a strong signal of certainty to the private sector. The longer you send the signal, the better," he said. "If you’re going to do a tax credit, do it long enough so it’s actually got a chance to work."

Another official for one of the groups at the meeting said the energy tax incentives were also spoken about in passing at the end of the gathering, which the official said involved about 25 participants.

"The topic of the meeting was really what could we do with existing authority to be more energy independent," and to discuss the energy progress report the administration released Monday, the official said. Each Cabinet official made a presentation, the official said.

Those invited to the meeting also included representatives of the AFL-CIO, the Solar Energy Industries Association, Growth Energy, Securing America's Future Energy, the Consumer Federation of America, America's Natural Gas Alliance, the Alliance to Save Energy, the American Wind Energy Association and the American Council On Renewable Energy, he said.

While most energy experts say Obama has minimal control over short-term prices, 50 percent of respondents in the Post’s poll said the president has power to do something about the cost of gasoline. If there's any solace for Obama, 45 percent acknowledged that his hands are tied on the subject.
The average price for a gallon of gasoline is $3.80, a nearly 50-cent surge for 2012, which has already prompted Americans to make changes to their behavior, according to a AAA survey released Monday.

Eighty-four percent said they've changed their driving habits or lifestyle in some way, including combining trips and errands, AAA reports. The gas price increase has also led 16 percent to purchase or lease a more fuel-efficient vehicle. If prices remain at current levels, AAA said the number would more than double to 34 percent.

With gas prices playing such a pivotal pocketbook role, Republican presidential hopefuls are trying to get in on the action.

Mitt Romney's campaign attacked Obama on Monday for failing to make any substantive changes over the last three years to the nation's energy policies. Last Thursday in Pascagoula, Miss., Romney promised to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and open up ANWR to oil and gas drilling.

"Since the president has been president, the cost of gasoline has doubled. Not exactly what he might have hoped for,” Romney said while standing in front of several oil rigs stationed at the refining city’s major port. “He’s said it’s not my fault. By the way, we’ve gone from ‘Yes, we can’ to ‘It’s not my fault.’ Well, this is in fact his fault.”

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The president of the United States is currently engaged in perpetrating the biggest fraud since the invention of the anthropogenic global warming scam.

In his weekly Saturday chat with the American people, Barack Hussein Obama vowed, “I am going to keep doing everything I can to help you save money on gas, both right now and in the future.”

He added, “We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices–not when we consume 20 percent of the world’s oil,” as if drilling for more oil wouldn’t result in more oil and lower prices at the pump. At the same time, he was effectively accusing Americans of causing high prices by indiscriminate consumption, like driving to work and heating their homes.

Obama has an odd way of implementing his resolve to help us “save money.”

Even before he assumed office, his energy secretary Steven Chu let the cat out of the gas bag when he indicated he wanted to raise gasoline prices to European levels of $10. a gallon. Mr. Chu is now calling the gas shots in Washington, putting the lie to the president’s phony concerns.

The Obama administration has also crippled off-shore oil exploration, rejected the Keystone XL pipeline project, repeatedly refused permission for companies to pump black gold in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, and stalled efforts at hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to recover petroleum.

Most recently, the president said we should invest in “energy sources of the future” and phase out oil, the energy source of “the past,” which happens to be the only reliable source we have.

As for developing our most abundant energy resource, coal, the president said during the last campaign that he wanted to put the coal industry out of business since he has better ideas.

His ideas? Windmills dependent on breezes that don’t always blow. Solar power which isn’t very effective at night or during cloudy days. Hydroelectic energy which requires waterfalls. And automobiles like the Chevy Volt which have the unfortunate tendency to catch fire at the most inopportune moments.

The administration rationale for all that baloney? Preserving our pristine waters, saving the caribou and the environment in ANWR, keeping our drinking water potable throughout the land, using pond scum to alchemistically create fuel, and forcing Americans to buy matchbox cars.

And, always in the forefront of Obama’s thinking is the passage of cap and trade legislation. The Wall Street Journal has aptly called the cap and trade charade “the tax that dare not speak its name.” Voters will eventually find out that the impact of carbon credits on their wallets will dwarf ten dollar gas, but it will be too late to do anything about it.

At the heart of all that hooey is Obama’s feigned and misplaced terror of global warming, a fear eerily similar to the panic of almost forty years ago over global cooling and the looming New Ice Age. . .

The more he talks the further he sinks in the polls. Most of us are finally on to all of his BS and no amount of rhetoric or trying to jump ahead of the news cycle will work. We have Iran about to acquire nuclear weapons and the war in Afghanistan imploding before our eyes while our president, as usual, is more concerned about the upcoming election.

If I had the Government putting free gas in my short I wouldn't care much either. They can try to spin this anyway they want to but the facts are the facts and everyone gets to pay the obscene prices at least once a week unless of course they are like the Energy Secretary who does not even own a car. Nice touch with reality we have here. We will rememebr come Novemebr that the Holy One stalled the Pipe Line held up drilling permits and took thousands of acres off line.

Before Obama TOTAL US Oil production had been decreasing for years, and through his term they have only been increasing. This had nothing to do with Obama, of course. If production had been going down as it previously that would be Obama's fault. Another coincidence just like the capture of Osama ( 2 years after Obama though 10 years after he attacked us).

What can he say that would alter the perception we all have of him saying he favored high gasoline prices, would "naturally skyrocket costs of energy", "bankrupt the coal industry"? Is Barry gonna tell us that algea will save us? This guy is more useless by the day! He's in total campaign mode and has not put in a full days work since 2009! Remove him in November 2012, and wave bye-bye in January 2013 when we start turning the country around. Obama is all about high unemployment, high energy costs, total dependence on foreign sources, higher food costs, and higher pverty rates! Thge man is a wrecking ball let loose on a civil society! He is also a man who uses the Constitution as toilet paper! What an absolute failure and flop this done nothing proved to be! He's lived up to every one of my predictions!

In all seriousness though, I do wish some of the Einsteins he has advising him would have taken a slower approach, i.e., put developing technologies in the proper context and ween the US off oil gradually. Not kill oil production with unproven and BS pipe dreams to fill the void.